


Hello, My Name Is

by blackcricket, Elliott_Fletcher



Series: The Line of Youth [3]
Category: Ookiku Furikabutte | Big Windup!
Genre: Alternate Universe, Angst, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-06-19
Updated: 2016-06-19
Packaged: 2018-07-16 05:48:48
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,566
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7255003
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/blackcricket/pseuds/blackcricket, https://archiveofourown.org/users/Elliott_Fletcher/pseuds/Elliott_Fletcher
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Someone should listen. I just don't want it to have to be me.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Hello, My Name Is

**Author's Note:**

> It was only after I wrote this that I realized I messed up the classes. Oh well, it's an AU.

**Izumi**

My headphones blare crackling, straining rock music, and yet I still hear the knock on the classroom door. It's probably because I'm expecting it. I've learned to expect it. Mizutani strides in, sliding the door shut with his foot carelessly, clumsily, and he stumbles on his way over to Abe's desk, which is sandwiched against Hanai's.

"So tired," he sings in a rough groan. Hanai rolls his eyes, and Abe takes another bite of food. Mizutani obviously doesn't know he's being ignored. He closes his eyes, throwing his bag on the empty desk to my right, and then he looks to me with piercing green eyes that seem to notice I was looking. I didn't used to look, but now I never stop. It's all his fault.

  
I feel shivers run down my arms, raising all the little hairs. I can't hold his heavy gaze. He blinks, and I look away. My lunch blurs in my vision, and that's when I realize something is missing—gone. My music had stopped, but I don't remember pausing it, and these headphones are new. They can't be broken already; Mom would kill me if I've broken them already.

I breathe deeply to calm down, because I can feel my heart racing, can feel his gaze on me. It's still so ponderous, like his thoughts weigh a tonne, and every pound is on my shoulders, inside my gut. I remember the ghost of my fingers on the pause button, remember the feel of cool plastic beneath my fingertips, but he had just poked his head in, then, had just entered my classroom. _Why didn't he ever stay in his own?_ Maybe he was ignored there, too. Maybe here was better. Maybe there was worse.

My sandwich comes into focus, and my head feels hot, so I touch my forehead with my wrist. Sweat beads smear on my skin, and I wipe them off on my shirt.

Have I gone insane? Did I actually pause my music for him—pause the world around me for him? I don't even know him. He just comes here, sits down in the chair beside me, and complains to people who don't even listen. . . . They should listen. When the only thing a person says isn't heard, but the many things everyone else says are overheard, I think there's an imbalance. A disorder. I think someone should be listening to him. I just don't want it to be me.

I fidget with my iPod until the sounds of conversation drown out, but every song reminds me of him. I don't know how I make it through the hour. But I do it anyway because I always do it. He can cling to every fibre of brain matter in my head, tear apart the tissue around my heart until it aches. I don't care. I'll ignore him like everyone else does.

His voice blurs under the layer of music, but I catch something he says under the pounding in my ears. "You'll go deaf if you keep your music so loud." I only hear it because it's the only thing he's said to me. Not around me, to me. Looking at me, piercing me again and laying all his weight on me. My spine would break if it wasn't put through this torture every day. Sometimes I think it was built for him. Other times I think he's the reason it's become so strong. I should thank him. I don't.

I roll my eyes like Abe, and take another bite like Hanai. But he still looks at me, and even strong spines break. I look at him, and his eyes are pleading, and his mouth is hopeful, so I stop scowling for a moment and let him see me for the first time. That seems to make him happy, so I make it last until the song ends.

I fold my arms on my desk and sleep, because some people aren't meant to be heard, and others just make it too hard not to.

I can lay in bed all I want. I can stare at ceilings and phone screens and walls that lose their colour in the darkness, but he'll still cling to my mind. I shouldn't remember him. He's a nuisance who comes into my classroom every day, sits beside me, talks to deaf ears, and smiles, looks, sleeps, and then leaves. He doesn't even eat. I wonder if he ever eats.

My mind won't let the thought of him go, so I'm forced to dream of him, smiling because of me, looking into me, and I wish I'd wake up, but he has me trapped.

When I do wake up, he's still there. He confuses me, confusing my thoughts. I wonder why he does it, why he even bothers, but I don't have an answer. I don't know how he can see me when no one else does, tries to. I don't know why he speaks to no one, speaks to the whole classroom without an answer, and still has the motivation to talk more. I don't know how he's still smiling when no one lives for him, when no one encourages him. I only smiled once, and yet he seemed brighter than the sun. We're so different. I would never have the courage to stand and tell deaf ears my every woe.

But maybe that's what he needs. Maybe it's his actions and words that make him himself, and not who he was born as. Maybe he doesn't want to be who he was. Maybe he needs to be who he is.

It must be important to him.

He swims in my head, and I can't get him out. But soon, I find I don't want him to leave, because after years of being alone in your own head, anyone's a comfort.

I'm back in the same seat, beside the same person, and this is insanity, really. He talks to the air, and I listen, and it shouldn't feel like eavesdropping, but it totally is, isn't it? I catch some words, interesting things, over the summit of my music. Sometimes I'll pause it unconsciously to listen to his voice. Sometimes I don't have to.

"Hello, my name is Mizutani," he says once, and it's to me, I know, but it always feels strange to be spoken to.

"I know," I mutter, and he beams.

"You do?"

I nod, and he's obviously waiting for my name, but I don't give it to him. I click the volume up two notches, and turn away before I have to watch his face fall.

This repeats for days, always the same thing. It's insanity. I don't even want to have to speak of it, but my world has started revolving around this moment. I can't ignore him any longer.

He enters the classroom, trips, sits down, smiles, stares, tries to steal one of my headphones, gets his hand swatted, and then beams. And then he introduces himself as Mizutani, and it should be familiar by now, but it isn't.

I don't think it'll ever be.

"I'm Mizutani. What are you listening to?"

I hand him a headphone now, because I want him to be quiet, and then I mutter, "I know." Except this time he doesn't smile. He grimaces like it hurt him, but I turn away. His face falls before I can close my eyes.

He looks pained now, whenever he introduces himself. I'm not ignoring him anymore. I don't speak much; I still listen to music; I still dream about him, night and day, but he looks crestfallen every time he enters my classroom. And I think I'd like to know why.

He sits in the desk beside me, his eyes watering. He does his best to hold the tears in, I can tell. The tips of his hair curl under his chin, and some of the droplets collect there, wetting the strands. He hasn't spoken much. I imagine the air feels lonely.

I toss him a headphone, but he doesn't acknowledge it. He looks to me, and his eyes hold no weight. I look to the paths the wet tears have made in his skin, and I wonder if the weight has rolled off him in the state of this salty water. Maybe his back is breaking, too. Maybe he doesn't want to talk to the air. Maybe he physically needs to in order to stay sane. Maybe this isn't insanity, but a desperate, final attempt to stay human.

His voice is half of what it used to be when he says, "Hi, I'm Mizutani." I'm about to open my mouth, about to speak without thinking, about to break our routine. But he beats me to it. "And no, you don't know!"

And then he's pushed himself from the desk with wobbly knees and gangly limbs, and if he didn't trip on the way out, I wouldn't have been able to catch his wrist.

I hold on, tight, and he turns to me, ready to shove. But I wrap him in my other arm, hugging him to my chest until he's as warm as I am and filled with a weightless air. And I lean into him, pressing into him, feeling my heart pound into him, and I whisper in his ear,

"Hello, my name is Izumi."

And I think it'll be okay.


End file.
